Hera
The Thalyrians had finally reached Athena’s blasted cavern. The distance was too great to see them from Mount Olympus with her real eyes, so she watched them in her mind’s eye, hearing and observing their every move.
Impatient, she drummed her fingers on the marble arm of her throne. She’d mostly avoided spying on them, finding it pricked her like a poisoned thorn to witness their growing attraction and understanding of their connection, but now that they were— at long last —where she wanted them, she wouldn’t let them out of her sight again.
Her upper lip quivered with a snarl of irritation. They were a nauseating pair. Heartfelt declarations. Scorching kisses. Roaming hands. Soon, they’d be finishing each other’s sentences and popping out endless offspring to carry on two explosive bloodlines.
Unless she decided that wouldn’t be their future—something wholly within her power.
She closed her eyes, but of course, that didn’t stop her from seeing their every touch and hearing their every word. “Stop kissing and go,” she growled to the empty chamber around her, angrily snapping her eyes open again.
For an alarming second, she saw nothing. Then her vision returned, and her pulse slowed.
Without Athena’s interference, she could’ve put the Shard of Olympus into Eryx’s hands the moment she felt its sharp, biting presence in Atlantis, or at least told him where to find it, but no… Only a Thalyrian-born human could remove the shard from its hiding place. Persephone had provided not one, but two, and had decided to wait for them to find it. She’d actually been…hopeful. She’d started envisioning a queen rather than a king on Atlantis’s throne. She had no love for Eryx. She had no love for the Firebringer, either, but she’d seen human dynasties rise and fall for millennia and knew what was better for the island overall.
Disgustingly, her generosity ended up working against her. She’d kept the coveted shard’s location from Eryx, who might’ve coerced one of the Thalyrians into diving for it. She’d delayed Eryx’s ceremony even though it meant delaying her own rise to power. But weeks turned into months. Nothing changed, so she and Pan set a trap. They only needed one of the interlopers to retrieve the shard. That hadn’t gone as planned, and now she lacked a general and a friend.
Abruptly standing, she walked to a high, arched window and looked southward toward where Pan was killed. Anger and shock still shook her, and she almost wished she were one of the statues of her brethren surrounding her in the great, empty hall of the great, empty palace. A statue had no feelings. No wants. No friends. And a statue didn’t care when feelings and wants were too consuming and friends were nowhere to be found.
She dug her fingers into the gilded window frame, the need to grip something overwhelming her—to grip and squeeze and overcome. She’d gathered fewer supporters than she’d hoped with her little experiment in Thalyria involving Zeus’s favored descendant. It seemed she’d made more enemies than allies by toying with the new queen and her unborn child. There were precious few Olympians she could count on to begin with, and their number had dwindled rather than grown.
She took a deep breath of fragrant Atlantian air, her eyes on the south and her vision on the owl cavern. Hephaestus always stood by her. Hermes, the little weasel, was at least her weasel. The Titan Perses was doing exactly what he was supposed to, and the outcome of his conniving didn’t concern her. Ares didn’t hate her, his own mother, but she couldn’t trust him and wouldn’t, especially after what she’d done to the Thalyrian queen and her family. Ares cared about Catalia Thalyria more than he cared about her—of that, she was certain. She’d deliberately kept him in the dark, because having the god of war against her could never be in her favor. She’d been whispering in other ears for years, but the results were inconclusive. The Gorgons were dead, so that was it. Her army of few.
Pan failed to secure her a Thalyrian to free the shard, so she sent Hephaestus’s metal harpies to snatch the Firebringer to use as leverage. Contrary to what she’d told the woman the night she took Cleito, the intention hadn’t been to kill. Bringing the Magoi to Mount Olympus would have meant revealing herself sooner than she wanted to, but at least her plans could finally have moved forward. The man would have retrieved the shard in return for the woman. The woman would have staked her claim to the Atlantian throne and used the shard in ’s name in return for the man. would have rivaled Zeus in power with the sudden, intense swell of gratitude and devotion from Atlantians bolstering her strength. It could have been a victory for them both. Two crowns for two queens. The throne of Atlantis for one. The high throne of Mount Olympus for the other.
For her .
She ground her teeth in frustration. The Thalyrians foiled that plan as well.
In all these months, none of Zeus’s allies saw fit to help their precious pets along, apparently waiting for Cleito to do it. After the failure with Pan, decided she should simply expose the location of the shard herself—thus maybe even gaining the Thalyrians’ cooperation in a way that spared anyone else’s involvement—but then, Cleito abruptly released the information after all.
A sharp huff emptied her lungs, leaving her chest hollower than ever. Zeus’s timing to unlock his Chaos Wizard’s knowledge couldn’t have been worse. Just when she’d decided to help them, her husband snatched the role of benefactor right out of her grasp.
She hadn’t initially brought Cleito to Atlantis for anything to do with her sister. Until the Firebringer arrived, she’d believed Eryx and the ritual she made sure he knew about were her only way to gain the loyalty and prayers of the islanders. He was a foul scrap of humanity, but he could have given her what she needed, even if it meant overlooking his treatment of women. She’d needed him to end Punishment in her name, but she hadn’t known the location of the final piece of the ritual, either—not until Athena unwittingly stuck the Shard of Olympus right under her nose but then spelled it so that only a Thalyrian could pull it from its hiding place.
She smiled at Athena’s accidentally cruel joke because hers would be crueler.
For a generation, she’d been as anxious as Eryx for crucial information about the shard’s location, but Cleito had resisted—and resisted hard. All that suffering, and ultimately, it wouldn’t even matter. would finally get what she wanted, and better yet, without Eryx.
No, she hadn’t kidnapped Cleito from her cradle for this, but oh what a purpose the unfortunate little seer would serve in the end. There was no way that fiery witch from Thalyria would let her sister die. Bellanca Tarva would retrieve the shard and, when push came to shove, she’d use it in ’s name. Atlantis would finally be hers.
Theirs.
Two crowns. Two queens.
An immortal triumph and a mortal one.
And if the Firebringer somehow chose poorly, had a contingency plan she wouldn’t hesitate to use. Eryx still lived—until the Firebringer killed him.
Her eyes narrowed, her heartbeat cold.
Playtime was over. Olympianomachy came now.